by Elodie Colt
Table of Contents
Title
Giveaway
Free Book
Copyright
Dedication
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books & Upcoming Releases
Contents
Title
Giveaway
Free Book
Copyright
Dedication
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Free Book
Giveaway
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books & Upcoming Releases
Giveaway
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Elodie Colt
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Warning:
This book contains sexual content and harsh language.
Recommended age: 18+
Cover Design: Art4Artists
Editing: Swish Design & Editing
Proofreading: Ink It Out
Formatting & Editorial Design: Elodie Colt
I dedicate this book to my last job which I quit because the boss was a difficult person (to put it mildly).
In return, I was jobless for four months and got so bored I started writing the first story that came to my head.
This book—the first of a 4-book-series—is the result.
So, dear ex-boss, thanks for this opportunity!
Four years had gone by, and the pain was still as raw as the night they'd taken away her only sister. Four years, and Haylie Bryceland was still searching for answers to the one question it all came down to—why?
Then they attacked her. She didn't know who they were, nor did she know the people who fought for her protection in the end. And when a young man saved her from death only to give his own life in return, Haylie realized she was doomed. It wouldn't take long for her to learn that the world bore secrets she had yet to uncover.
Dylan Dwight was the best Fighter in the compound. As the leader's second-in-command, he had a decent life with friends he considered family and enough women queuing up for one taste of him.
Everything changed when Ricky got himself killed because he saved a Natural—the rarest human species on earth. Dylan devoted his life to protect them and failed—twice. Two young women he could have saved but lost.
And then came this Bryceland girl—incredibly, the third Natural who'd crossed his path, and all in the matter of a couple years. He was destined to protect her. It was his job, his mission. But how could he when all he craved was revenge in Ricky’s name, as she, of all people, was responsible for his death? When each time he looked into her golden eyes, a color so rare it had its own name—Jaylior—he was reminded of his failures, and the constant agonizing realization that if he couldn’t protect the others, how on earth was he going to protect her?
Four years ago
The nightlife outside was apparent as rumbling cars, squealing girls, bass lines from subwoofers, and the clinking of bottles carried through the open window. The chilly autumn night air blew over my bare arms, but I resisted the temptation to shut it in case Shawna returned, which would hopefully be soon.
For the millionth time, my gaze flew to the clock on the wall, and I watched with dread as the minute hand jumped to midnight.
The unsettling feeling in my stomach grew. Had Shawna missed the bus home? She should have returned an hour ago. The two messages I’d left in her mailbox had gone unanswered. Was my worry warranted, or was I just being paranoid? Shawna had never been late before, but I also didn’t want to appear like a mother hen calling my little sister every few minutes. I rose from my bed and started to pace my room while racking my brain about what to do.
Shawna had never been a rebellious kid, at least not when it came to the serious things in life. She’d never missed a deadline I’d set because I gave her all the freedom she needed. Shawna knew I was the only family she had left, and that the two of us needed to stick together. Although she was stuck in the middle of puberty—much to my annoyance, I might add—she did her best to support me. We were a team. It went against everything she was to let me down like this.
My phone’s screen flashed, and the sudden vibration made me jump a foot in the air. I snatched the device from the nightstand noticing Shawna’s name over her sweet laughing picture on the home screen. Should I be relieved or troubled that she was calling me now?
I quickly wiped over the answering button and put the phone to my ear. “Shawna! Thank God, I was already worrying—”
A strange sound from the other end of the line stopped me short. I heard a rhythmic hissing noise like rapid breathing, and then there was something else—low footsteps or the rustling of fabric, maybe.
“Shawna?”
No answer. My heart picked up a few beats. I was short of shouting her name again when I could make out muffled voices. Pressing a finger to my free ear to block out any other noises, I concentrated on making out what was being said.
My heart nearly stopped beating when I heard whimpers and sobs followed by a loud bump before a woman with a raspy voice started to speak.
“Well, little one, didn’t anyone ever tell you not to walk the streets alone at night? Two young girls wandering through these dark alleys unprotected appears to be truly dangerous these days.”
The breath hitched in my throat as I listened to the unfamiliar, cold voice. Whoever was talking did so with enough malice in her tone to let icy shivers crawl over my skin. In that instant, I knew with every fiber of my body that the strange woman didn’t have good intentions.
Suddenly, there was a strangled cry, as if the other person the woman was talking to was struggling with answering.
“Pl… Please… Let me… go…”
The phone nearly slid from my hand as I recognized the broken and terrified voice of my little sister. Taking into account what was already spoken, Shawna and her friend, Alice, were in danger.
The woman’s voice tore me from my whirling thoughts, and vicious laughter
erupted from the person currently confronting Shawna.
“Why should I let you go when I just caught you? Oh, no… You don’t know how long we’ve been waiting to find someone like you, how long we were on the hunt to find someone with those eyes. Still so adorably young and innocent…” the woman added dramatically making it clear how much she was enjoying the moment.
My senses kicked into overdrive. Wherever Shawna was, I had to find her… quickly. Apparently, my sister had managed to dial my number without her kidnapper noticing, and for a short moment, I was grateful Shawna had accepted my advice to save my number through speed-dialing in case of an emergency.
Unfortunately, it was an emergency now.
Keeping the phone close to my ear, I frantically questioned my brain about my next step. Shawna and Alice had been going to a club two miles uptown. Taking the bus was out of the question, and my bicycle was still safely stored in the cellar with a flat tire waiting to be replaced. I cursed inwardly clawing at my face in panic. I’d planned to fix the tire earlier that week but put it off every day. Now it cost me.
There was some rustling on the other end of the line while the woman continued to speak in her rough voice. From the sound of it, I guessed the woman was not older than thirty. Some accent sharpened her speaking—Spanish or Portuguese, maybe.
“I’m truly sorry for what I’m going to do. I really am… but I don’t have a choice. It’s too dangerous for you to continue to exist, too dangerous for all of us. You don’t know what you will be able to do when you’re grown up, so it’s my duty to prevent that from happening. I know you don’t understand, but believe me, it’s for the best.” The last words were animalistic growls sending only more shivers down my spine.
She was going to kill her. She was going to kill my sweet, little sister!
No, I wouldn’t survive it. Shawna was the only family I had left, the only one I cared about. I couldn’t lose her, too. She was fifteen years old. She had yet to get through college, love, marriage, children, and everything else the future might have in store for her.
I jumped into action, not daring to waste any more valuable time, and sprinted out of my room. Racing down the stairs, I nearly fell when I took the last steps in one leap.
I quickly slipped into my sneakers and grabbed my windbreaker and the front door keys from the countertop. Pressing the phone to my ear, I somehow managed to push open the front door while putting on my jacket at the same time.
I was already in the process of dashing down the dark street as fast as my legs would push me when I could make out another voice over the phone, this one male and less playful.
“Stop wasting time and get this over with. We can’t afford someone to see us. You know the trouble we’d be in if the police caught us!”
I heard another growl. This time, I was positive it came from the woman in response to the order she’d just received, which she clearly didn’t take well.
I knew the way to the club well enough, but the seconds were ticking by, and I wished for a shortcut to appear in front of me. There was none, so I had to make one.
I abruptly dashed to the right, leaving a young couple in confusion when I cut in front of them. Their yells behind me fell on deaf ears as I raced through a narrow, dirty pathway between two houses in hopes of getting to Shawna quicker.
Then the voice of the crazy woman resounded again, this time dripping with animosity.
“You’re afraid of the police, really? Those incompetent humans with those silly useless things they call guns? You know we can take them out in one swipe. There’s nothing to worry about, you idiot!”
Humans? Was she kidding? Who the hell was I dealing with here? Patients of a nearby psychiatric ward making their escape?
“Besides, don’t be such a killjoy,” the woman continued, her voice now layered with a false sweetness similar to a purring cat. “We’ve been looking for years to find one, and I want to indulge in the feeling as long as she’s still alive. I want to hear her strong heartbeat just for a few seconds longer…”
What the hell?
Whoever they were, I prayed the woman would slow down the wicked game she was playing to buy me more time. My clumsiness didn’t make me the best runner, but I wasn’t going to back down. I had to find Shawna… whatever it took.
The icy wind blew against my face and ears, my fingers starting to tremble as I pressed the phone harder against my ear. My heart pumped faster boosted by the constant flow of adrenaline. It was getting more and more difficult to strain my ears to hear what was being said over the phone above my beating heart and heavy breathing.
Taking another sharp turn to the right, I skidded to an abrupt halt before colliding with a wooden wall suddenly blocking my path. For a tiny moment, I was thankful that whoever had nailed the panels so poorly together hadn’t cared about installing a fence with sharp spikes on top to keep burglars off the property or, in this case, intruders like me. Well, I wasn’t going to turn around, so if I had to run over private grounds to save my sister, then I would do exactly that.
Removing the phone from my ear, I jumped to grab the edge of the wall and swung my legs over it. I silently scolded myself for ditching the gym all the time. A little more flexibility would be helpful now.
Landing on a beautiful flower bed on the other side, I barely noticed how affectionately the owner had taken care of this particular spot in the garden, but I couldn’t care less about ruining it right now.
My heart skipped a beat when I saw my phone had landed in the moist earth. I grabbed it, and sighed in relief when I realized I hadn’t accidentally ended the call.
Stumbling over some plants and décor stones, I continued to cross one garden after another. I’d never entered property without permission before, let alone done anything that would have warranted a ticket, and I briefly wondered if I could get away undetected without any neighbors noticing me.
Well, if they did, they’d call the police, and maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, considering I was in desperate need of support right now. I put the phone back to my ear just in time to catch the woman continue with her weird talking.
“Those eyes were haunting me in many nightmares, you know. The power you keep locked inside of you is beyond all of our imaginations.”
What was it with that woman and her obsession with Shawna’s eyes? They weren’t different than those from others. Well, at least not much—the color was definitely not the same.
Hazel eyes—a rich brown mixed with a tinge of amber and a hue of topaz. Rather uncommon. In fact, I’d never met anyone with hazel eyes except my mother, whom we’d both inherited the rare color from, but I’d never given it a thought as to why that was. I’d always wondered how it was possible that both of us were born with the exact same eyes as our mother, especially as our father had blue-gray ones. Chances should have been high that at least one of us would get a mixture of everything, but that wasn’t the case with my sister and me.
Why the hell would that be of importance to anyone? And most of all—why could that be a motive to take someone’s life?
Refocusing on the task at hand, I continued to jump over flower beds and climb over fences that clearly weren’t built for thwarting off burglars. They were anything but insurmountable and merely existed for decoration and as a boundary to the adjoining houses. I hoped I was running in the right direction, but I’d have to get out of the neighborhood first to be sure.
As I landed on another property, something suddenly restrained my eyesight. I stumbled over my feet in an attempt to regain my balance, but failed miserably as my limbs got tangled up in huge pieces of fabric. I must have run blindly through bed sheets hanging off a clothesline. Now, a particularly big one was wrapped around my head and shoulders. I frantically tore the fabric away from my face, nearly shouting in frustration when it took me three attempts to free myself. I got up once more, leaving the sheet behind in the dirt.
I leaped over a beautiful fountain wetting most of
my clothes in the process. And then I was finally out of the neighborhood.
Another choking sound from the other end of the line caught my attention while I was deciding which way to go.
“Please, don’t hurt me. I’ve done nothing. You have the wrong one, I swear!” Shawna’s desperation was audible and gave me the boost I needed to stomp my feet faster over the ground.
Rumbling engines and howling sirens told me I wasn’t far away from the main street. Bolting in that direction, I nearly hit a lamppost but dodged it in the last second. Instead, I bumped into a set of garbage cans with a force that knocked the breath out of my lungs. The impact nearly made me slipping over the rotting rubbish scattered on the ground, but I regained my balance before falling and wasting valuable time.
An outraged cry that nearly gave me a heart attack echoed through the narrow brick walls of the surrounding buildings, but it was just one of the homeless I’d woken up with the clattering of the garbage cans. I desperately hoped the sound hadn’t been so loud as to be amplified through Shawna’s speakers drawing attention to her kidnappers.
“Oh, my sweet child, of course, you did nothing wrong! It’s not your fault you are what you are, but you cannot be allowed to live any longer.” The woman heaved a desperate sigh to add more drama to her false sweetness.
“But… but Alice… why…” Shawna stuttered.
My chest constricted over my already burning lungs. Her voice was so low now that I struggled with making out the separate words. It was clear her energy was slowly leaving her.
“Oh, that,” the woman pondered as if discussing some little inconvenience. “I’m sorry it has come to this, but you have to understand we can’t allow any witnesses to stay alive. The girl would have blown our cover. Our existence needs to stay a secret, no matter the costs.”
I stopped short, the blood freezing in my veins. No. This couldn’t be happening. They’d already killed Alice.
